Health fund backs Epistem’s Genedrive roll-out
MANCHESTER diagnostics firm Epistem has raised nearly £5m from a fund backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The firm has issued a five-year, £4.7m bond to the Global Health Investment Fund to support the roll-out of its Genedrive, a handheld machine which uses molecular diagnostics to quickly test for a range of conditions.
Epistem is currently carrying out field trials for tuberculosis in developing countries.
As part of the deal Epistem and GHIF have made commitments to introduce and distribute the Genedrive in “low and middle-income countries”.
The GHIF is an investment fund designed to provide financing to commercialise new tools to fight diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/Aids and maternal and infant mortality in the world’s poorest countries. It was capitalised by individual investors, private foundations, institutional investors, three leading pharmaceutical companies, a multilateral development bank and the Governments of Canada and Germany.
It has a partial guarantee from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. It is managed by LHGP Asset Management, the London-based asset management arm of Lion’s Head Global Partners.
Epistem’s chief executive Matthew Walls said: “The support of the GHIF represents a very powerful endorsement of our strategy of developing Genedrive for infectious disease applications and our decision to target the tuberculosis market with our first assay. We are very excited about the potential of the GHIF’s global network to financially support and commercially advance the roll-out of the Genedrive unit and our menu of new molecular diagnostic tests for ‘Point of Care’ application in low resource settings.”
In a pre-close statement the Manchester company said it expected a loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £2.5m due to investment in Genedrive.
Corporate partner at Pinsent Masons Anna Brown led a team advising on the deal assisted by finance associate Dawn Bell and corporate assistant Graeme Stapleton.
